Measurement · also called Post-view conversion, VTC
View-through conversion
A view-through conversion is a conversion credited to an ad that the person saw but did not click, when they convert within a set time window after the impression.
Not everyone clicks an ad before buying. Someone might see a video, then days later type the brand's website in directly and make a purchase. View-through attribution credits the ad impression for that conversion if it happened within a lookback window, such as one, seven or 30 days.
View-through credit matters for display, video and CTV, where clicking is uncommon or impossible. Without it, those channels would appear to drive almost no results. But it is easy to overcount: if an ad was shown to millions of people, many of them will buy anyway, and a generous window can credit ads for sales they had nothing to do with.
That makes view-through conversions a favourite target for manipulation: fraudsters generate huge numbers of cheap, unseen impressions, including on hidden ads, to claim view-through credit, a form of attribution fraud. Sensible practice is to use short windows, require viewable impressions, filter invalid traffic, and validate with incrementality tests.
Think of it like this
It is like a street performer asking for a tip from everyone who later bought a ticket to the theatre because they walked past his pitch.
An example
A car-rental firm in the US counts conversions within one day of a viewable CTV impression; in a month it records 900 view-through bookings, and a holdout test suggests about 250 of them were truly incremental.
Related terms
Attribution
Attribution is the process of assigning credit for a conversion, such as a sale, sign-up or install, to the ads, channels or touchpoints that a customer encountered beforehand.
Attribution fraud
Attribution fraud is manipulating how conversions are credited, so a fraudster claims payment for installs, sales or leads it did not actually cause, often by faking or timing clicks.
Incrementality
Incrementality is the extra result, such as sales, installs or visits, caused by advertising that would not have happened without it, usually measured by comparing exposed and unexposed groups.
Viewable impression
A viewable impression is an ad impression that meets a viewability standard, by default the MRC's: 50% of the ad's pixels on screen for one continuous second, or two seconds for video.
Conversion
A conversion is a valuable action that an advertiser wants people to take after seeing or clicking an ad, such as a purchase, sign-up, app install, call or form submission.